Blog Entries tagged 'essays'

GROWING UP, my sexuality, like for many, was shaped by the culture I lived and breathed, and heterosexuality was pretty much the only meal served at the Table of Sexual Orientation. Ken and Barbie did not have lovers of the same sex. Denise did not fret to Daddy Huxtable about her girl crush. From the moment I grew breasts, people asked whether I wanted to be a lawyer or an astronaut when I grew up, and if I had a boyfriend. No one, not ever, not once, asked if I had a girlfriend. If they had, I might have considered the possibility. But they didn't, so I didn't, either. The thought never crossed my mind. Which might explain why, the first time I fell in love with a woman, I was completely thrown.

I was 21 years old, four months out of college, three months out of a relationship with a boy I thought I was going to marry, and employed at a nonprofit. One evening, I was working a fundraiser at an awards ceremony for women in the film industry. A possible suitor, male or female, was as far from my mind as the salt lakes in the Himalayas. And yet, as I strode across the exquisitely appointed room toward yet another philanthropist, I bumped into a very beautiful woman.

She was a celebrity who shall go forever unnamed, but I will say that she was statuesque and confident, and her skin glowed with health, wealth, and carefully applied bronzer. I sputtered and apologized for almost knocking her down. She smiled and touched my arm, but I was mortified and dashed into the women's room. I had never felt attracted to a woman before. It was as if my whole view of what was sexy, sensual, and possible had just turned on its axis.

The election of 2008 broke many barriers, not the least was its demolishing the cult of masculinity.

By Rebecca Walker

Barack
Obama’s journey to the White House was punctuated by watershed moments:
Obama addressing untold thousands in Berlin, and millions more in his
televised speech on race. Obama sending love to his wife and daughters
via the big screen at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Michelle Obama symbolically crashing the gates of the White House in
her stunning red dress. Then there was the final presidential debate,
when Obama showed the world what it means to be a man in America, circa
right now.

At Belmont University, McCain played the
confrontational “tough guy,” bringing the pain to back up his pre-fight
taunt to “whip Obama’s you-know-what.” But as McCain waxed pugilistic
on issues of abortion, taxation and Joe the Plumber, Obama talked about
“sacred sexuality,” and expressed concern for middle class Americans
losing their financial footing. Audience polling called the debate
overwhelmingly for Obama, and David Gergen, with trademark nonpartisan
gravitas, said McCain looked angry. Obama was the voice of reason. But
something else was going on. Two tropes of masculinity were battling
for dominance.

The skirmish was as much about re-writing the
narrative of male power as it was about winning the election. Think
John Wayne vs. the Dalai Lama, Bernard Madoff vs Martin Luther King,
and George Bush vs Al Gore, all over again. Who would prevail? The man
who would prosecute an ongoing ground war against mortal enemies, or
the one who would attempt peaceful resolution? The one who would empty
the coffers of charitable foundations, or the one who would fight for
all Americans to be recognized as whole human beings? The one who would
drill in the arctic, or face an inconvenient truth? A third generation
military man with seven-make that eight-homes, or a multiracial Harvard
Law graduate and community organizer with one house, a Ford Escape and
a bike?

It was the next chapter in the great American story of
individuals breaking out of restrictive stereotypes based on race,
class and gender.

Thirty years ago women demanded freedom from
oppressive ideals of femininity. Today more and more men are refusing
the toxic role of “being a man.” The debate was a turning point in a
larger reckoning, a tacit acknowledgment that John Wayne, the standard-
bearer of American masculinity for over five decades, may not have been
good for America.

The rules of traditional heterosexual
masculinity are still so pervasive in American culture, almost any male
over twelve can tick them off with ease. Don’t cry, or even feel. Don’t
engage in complex strategic processing; take the easier road and slug
disagreements out instead. Win those skirmishes, or be tagged “gay”-the
worst kind of slight in a homophobic male environment defined by sexual
conquest of women, the more powerful the better. Regardless of race or
class, real men should make a lot of money and have the power to hire
and fire, like Fifty Cent and Donald Trump, as proof of their
dominance. Some African-American men display their resistance to white
male dominance, and thus their own brand of male power, by embracing an
anti-intellectual, “too cool for school” posture, a perfect example of
a masculine trope undermining the success of the person be hind the
mask. And even though Asian-American men are often emasculated in our
culture, they can lean on the mythological martial skills of their
ancestors to claim a kind of uber-dominance. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan,
Lao Tzu, and Mao Zedong are some of the most famous fighters in the
world.

There are other criteria, but the underlying message is
clear: follow the rules of the cult of masculinity and you will live to
see another day. Slip up and be humiliated, or worse. Just ask the
stay-at-home dads struggling for the respect of their peers in
corporate America, or the gay and transgender men beaten up on any
given night by groups of men yelling “faggot.”

Enter Barack
Obama, who rose to the highest office expressing a willingness to meet
with America’s known enemies. On the campaign trail, he shared his
feelings openly. On election night, he was photographed holding the
hand of his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson. When Obama talks about
people losing their homes and being unable to afford to send their kids
to college, his words seem to come from the heart, the compassionate
place marked “for women only” for so long.

Obama’s ideologically
diverse cabinet is another indicator that he doesn’t believe in a
top-down, top-dog approach, or that the best ideas will come from the
man at the head of the table. Solutions are expected to come as a
result of dynamic interactions between exceptional individuals. He’s
not afraid to articulate a vision that includes the safety and well
being of the LGBT community, and he doesn’t shy away from supporting a
woman’s right to make difficult, and often heart-wrenching, choices
about what to do with her body, be it terminate a pregnancy or act as a
surrogate for another woman’s child. Obama’s value as a man isn’t in
his bank account; it’s in his openness to changing the game and
identifying the players necessary to do it successfully.

Finally,
there is Michelle Obama, the coup de grace. Wife, best friend, and his
“rock,” as he said in his victory speech. Michelle is Barack’s secret
weapon, and he consistently acknowledges that their relationship is the
engine of his success. When Obama told Barbara Walters that he figured
out long ago that “if mama ain’t happy, no one is,” a lot of couples
laughed out loud at home. It spoke to a certain truth about successful
heterosexual partnerships: that cultivating interdependence with a
woman is a much better idea than trying to dominate her. Obama’s
fatherhood, too, seems as important to him as his public policy.

The
genius of it all is that Obama appears to have supplanted many of the
traditional elements of masculinity without sacrificing his virility
and clear intention to protect American interests by any means
necessary. He plays a competitive game of basketball and pulls off a
wicked poker face while making stealth moves behind the scenes.His sex
appeal is palpable, as the millions of viewers drawn to the recent
vacation photo of him shirtless in Hawaii prove, as does the intimacy
the Obamas display everywhere they appear.

Obama’s unique
blend of openness and strength has tremendous appeal to men seeking to
liberate themselves from an archaic and ineffectual model of
masculinity without sacrificing their swagger. He stands for the
millions of men who have always defined their manhood on their own
terms, but have never had this level of cultural support for their
choices.

For those looking for a role model for their children,
Obama is also a welcome change. Nathalie Hopkinson, co-author of
“Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop
Generation,” speaks for many parents when describing the shift she’s
seen in her seven year old son over the last months. He’s become
President of his class, taken to wearing a tie and blazer to school and
traded in his backpack for a briefcase. All of this bodes well for a
nation plagued by increasing violence and falling test scores, but we
will have to wait and see how Obama’s style plays out as he goes head
to head with Dmitriy Anatolyevich Medved, Hu Jintao and Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. To be deemed an acceptable mode of leadership, Obama’s
“enlightened masculinity” will need to restore some semblance of peace
in the Middle East and faith in American markets abroad.

As men
abandon dominance as a way of moving in the world, women will have to
continue to evolve their identities as well. Thanks to the women’s
movement most American women today see themselves as equal, if not
superior, to men. But women still have to continue to shed the
powerful, if sublimated, fantasy of a knight in shining armor coming
forward to protect and defend. After givinga recent speech on
contemporary masculinity at St Louis University, I met several women
who said they lost respect for boyfriends who expressed vulnerability,
and men said they felt pressured to prove their manliness by protecting
their girlfriends from the advances of other men.

Truth be
told, the final presidential debate was about women, too. We watched,
calculating how quickly we could evolve. Would we be safe with a
President who shares his feelings and doesn’t get spitting mad? What
kind of fundamental changes would we need to make in order to be
congruent with the new paradigm?

If Michelle Obama is any
indication, we will need to become more comfortable playing all
possible roles-mentor, wife, mother, defender, “rock”-while being
defined by none. Her willingness to be a true counterpart, secure in
her power and flowing between roles, rather than an adversary competing
for the top spot or a self-sacrificing and resentful subordinate, means
that our new First Family provides Americans of both sexes a model for
reaching beyond outdated ideas about gender. This is good news in
difficult times, because ultimately, in the words of Abraham Lincoln,
upon whose bible Obama will take the oath of office, “A house divided
against itself cannot stand.”

Like many biracial Americans of my generation, my parents met in the
tumultous cultural revolution of the 1960s. They married when it was
illegal for people of different races to do so, and continued to challenge
entrenched assumptions about race by having me. It was dangerous work.The Klan threatened our interracial family in Mississippi often. My father's Jewish mother disowned him for marrying a black woman.